Turkey Soup

There is no recipe for turkey soup. It makes a lot, though.

Banana/Cranberry Bread

I mentioned this bread on my other blog. I've been doing some holiday bread baking, and I like to make them ahead of time and freeze them. They seem to just get better after a couple of days. OSLO and I both had a sample slice of this one, and it is as good as I remembered it. This bread is easy to make, but it does dirty three bowls. Bowl one is the largest bowl, and it has one cup of sugar and one stick of margarine in it. (Room temperature margarine.) Beat them together well. Bowl one now becomes your main bowl.

Bowl two has two cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and one teaspoon of cinnamon in it. Whisk together, or at least stir it up with a fork. Bowl three has one cup of mashed very ripe bananas, two beaten eggs, one quarter cup of milk and a half teaspoon of vanilla in it.

Pour bowl three (banana/egg) into bowl one (sugar/margarine). Mix well (with a spoon). Add bowl two (flour/baking powder/cinnamon) gradually into bowl one. Stir just until the flour is mixed in. Fold in one and a half cups of cranberries which have been cut in half. Bake in a 9X5 inch greased bread pan at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, or until it is done. Remove from oven, put the pan on a rack for 15 minutes, remove the bread from the pan, put it back on the rack, let it cool completely. [You can probably substitute about 2/3 cup of wheat flour for the same amount of white flour, and it should still turn out fine.] This has all the moist goodness of banana bread with the tart bite of cranberries. Good stuff.

Pumpkin Bread

It is only a week until Thanksgiving! Pumpkin bread is part of that holiday's traditions for us, whether it is homemade, or purchased at DeBoer's Bakerij. This is a modified Joy Of Cooking Cookbook recipe. The usual drill -- preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix or whisk together:

1 3/4 cups flour (or substitute up to 3/4 cup of wheat flour for the same amount of the white)

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon each: cloves, nutmeg, ginger and pumpkin pie spice

In a large bowl, beat until light and fluffy:

1 1/3 cups sugar

1/3 cup soft shortening or margarine

2 eggs (the margarine and eggs really should be at room temperature)

Add 1 cup canned pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie mix -- the cans look deceptively alike)

Add the dry ingredients to the egg/margarine/sugar mixture alternately with 1/3 cup milk (into which you've poured 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla - optional). The book says to do it in three additions -- I did it in five, starting with the flour mixture, since I wasn't sure if they meant three of each, or three altogether. Put into a greased 5 X 9 inch bread pan. Bake at 350 degrees.

I am pretty sure that I was not supposed to open the oven door to take a picture of the batter after it had already started to bake. No harm seems to have been done, fortunately.

Remove from oven when it's done -- this is the hardest part for me. I decided it was done after about 55 minutes. The cookbook says an hour. Ovens vary, and I used a dark pan which bakes faster, I hear. Let it cool on the rack in the pan for 10 or 15 minutes, then remove it from the pan. I added extra spices -- the original recipe has only 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon cloves, but I like a spicy bread. If this is good, I'll make another loaf for Thanksgiving. If not, there's time for a trip to DeBoer's. I made some of my homemade tomato soup for lunch today, and I'm thinking that this bread would go well with the leftover soup for lunch tomorrow.

Sausage Potato Roast

As mentioned elsewhere on the tubes, I made an attempt at a sausage & potato roast a week or so ago. For a first try it wasn't so bad but I wanted to perfect it a bit before I put it on the blog. Tonight was my second attempt and I think it turned out well, so here goes:

Step 1 - Start out with some potatoes. I had Yukon Gold and some new red potatoes, so I used those:

Step 2: Cut them up in to bite size pieces and put them in a baking dish. Add some olive oil to coat them (not too much) and some salt and pepper. Then put them in a 400 degree oven to bake for about 20 minutes:

While the potatoes are baking, take out the rest of the ingredients. Sausage, about one whole sausage per person (I got pork/garlic/shallots from our local specialty butcher. YUM!), half an onion (color of your choice), and a package of mushrooms.

Cut up the onions and mushrooms then, after 20 minutes, add all of this to the potatoes. Nestle the sausages down in the middle. Cook for 20 more minutes and then turn the sausages. Cook for still 20 minutes more or so and everything should be done and look fantastic, kind of like this:

Enjoy!

Homemade Pizza

I haven't posted anything here for a while. Since I was 'cooking' tonight, it seemed easy enough to take a few pictures along the way. I'm pretty sure that I am not the only one who makes and bakes their own pizzas in this family. When we lived in DeKalb, OSLO used to make "Uncle Gene's Pizza" about once a week, whenever I had a night class. This version is a little different than that. Most of this stuff I keep on hand, 'just in case.' The Pillsbury Pizza Crust in a can is pretty good, any spaghetti sauce will do, and the rest depends on what I have in the refrigerator. That's diced ham, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and pepperoni. I added some shredded three cheese Italian, and some shredded mozzarella cheese. I like a lot of cheese. This is what it looked like before it went in the oven.

And this is what it looked like when it came out. I baked it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes -- that's not quite what it said on the package the dough came in, but close. I threw a bunch of spices on it, too. Parsley, Italian Seasonings.... maybe some garlic salt.

So that's supper. Anybody else make homemade pizza any more?

Tomato Soup

Apparently today is National Start! Eating Healthy day, sponsored by the American Heart Association. (National Start! Walking day is April 10, 2010 -- but that's another story for another time.) I took my cue from a previous entry on this blog, featuring a school day lunch. There is no attempt at authenticity here, this is just the tomato soup that I made today for lunch for myself and TOPWEH. (The other person who eats here.) These are the ingredients -- plus a tablespoon of flour.

• 1 Tablespoon olive oil (or butter)
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 small carrot chopped -- put the oil, onion and carrot in your cooking pot on medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes
• 1 Tablespoon flour -- add to the pot, cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently, then --
• ADD:
• 1 14 ounce can of crushed tomatoes (I used diced) or 1 pound of fresh tomatoes
• 1 cup chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
• 1/4 teaspoon basil
• 1/4 teaspoon thyme
• 1 small bay leaf and
• salt and pepper - bring this all to a boil, reduce heat, cover, simmer for 15 minutes, stirring frequently
• Remove Bay Leaf!!!!

Turn off the heat, remove from heat, and blend the mixture. Add 1/2 to 1 cup of half and half or milk, salt and pepper. Do not return to a boil after this point. The milk will curdle if you do. I left the soup a little bit chunky because I like chunks of stuff in my soup.

I made a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches, following the directions in the earlier post, while the soup was simmering. Sorry, I didn't have any white bread. Fresh tomatoes instead of canned and milk instead of half and half would make it an even better entry for National Start! Eating Healthy day, but any day with an exclamation point in the middle is not deserving of being taken too seriously. The soup was good. The recipe made about 3 bowlsful of soup of the size in the photo.

Bread Machine

I am continuing to play with yeast. Today I tried wheat bread in my bread machine. (After I dug it out and dusted if off.) I am not at all happy with the result. Disappointing. I have more yeast and more flour, so there will probably be another attempt at bread making. This looked like a pretty simple process, too. I must say that the house smells really good, though.